A little about us...

Bill Browning was raised as a dairyman on this farm, which was then the dairy farm his parents named "Harbet Farm" (Harbet is a combination of Harold and Betty, Bill’s Mom and Dad – a six letter prefix required to register the Holsteins the Brownings raised). During college Bill was home every Friday night to Monday morning milking cows and working with his father to manage the dairy. Bill graduated from college in Boston and came back to operate and manage the dairy farm as the eleventh generation of his family to farm the Browning Homestead. During the next 30 years, milking up to 115 cows and raising another 100 replacement heifers at any one time, Bill’s skill, attention to animal husbandry, interest in producing the best quality milk possible and 24/7/365 labor brought professional and industry recognition to the farm. His degree in Construction Design also came in handy, as he built many of the farm buildings, including a state of the art milking parlor that was easier on the cows and ensured the highest degree of milk quality.

Bill and Roberta met when she began trucking a trailer to Matunuck for Bill’s silage for her girls (4 Dexter and Dexter/Highland/Hereford crosses - Adele, Irene, Cloudy and Lady) and flock of sheep. Yes, silage brought us together and we married in 2007. Given the harsh realities of being a small dairy farm in the 21st century, most of the price for milk going to the various "middle men" in dairy production and going down for the farmer, Bill had planned for phasing out the dairy and phasing in beef production, with direct farm to consumer sales of the grass fed beef. With Roberta’s hobby farm experience raising cattle for beef and sheep for lamb since 1992, it was kismet -- Browning Homestead Farm grass fed beef (and lamb) was born!

While continuing to run the dairy, Bill also started to build a herd of cattle meant for grass living and growing. Roberta and Bill also started increasing their small flock of "South County Special" sheep. In the summer of 2009 Bill stopped milk production to concentrate full time on farming the grass and raising the grass-fed cattle and sheep that were to become the grass fed beef and lamb we would first start to offer to consumers in the summer of 2010.